Saving at CVS June 11, 2008

Thanks to all of you who commented or emailed about the Super Savings post on Saturday. I confess that there are weeks I am unable to get the great deals like that. However, I am addicted to looking for the bargain! Many of you asked how to do the savings at CVS. I am going to give you a quick example of some of the things this week that you can do to save. First, you need to know some of the quirks of CVS.

*Buy one, get one free: It really means the 2nd item is free. Some stores will make both items half price (our Publix and Kroger do this).
*ECB: This means Extra Care Bucks. You can earn these when you buy certain amounts of advertised products. It is printed on your receipt. You redeem them on your next purchase like a coupon. The amount of your ECB’s is applied to your total.
*The ECB’s that you earn do expire. They last about a month. You will need to make sure not to loose them and to redeem them before they expire.
*You will need a CVS card in order to get the deals and earn the ECB’s.
* Check out the Money Saving Mom site here for more details on how to make CVS work for you. I love this site and visit often for a list of deals!

If you have never shopped CVS, here is a sample of some deals you can work this week.

Buy $20.00 worth of participating General Mills products, get $10.00 in ECB’s. (includes Honey Nut Cheerios, Fruity Cheerios, Fiber One Cereal or Bars, Nature Valley Bars). Go here to print a coupon for $1.00 off Honey Nut Cheerios. Go here to print coupons for the Fiber One Cereal or Nature Valley Granola Bars. There are also coupons for the cereal too!

Buy $10.00 worth of Nivea for Men Products, earn $5.00 ECB’s. There are some $4.00/2 products that were in the paper this last Sunday. If your husband uses this, I would try to work this in somehow.

Kid’s Listerine, buy 1 at $3.49, get $3.49 in ECBs. Click here to print a $1.00 off coupon (limit 2).

Oral B cross action manual toothbrush (2 pack), buy 1 at $6.99, get $6.99 in ECB (limit 2).

CVS Bandaids, buy 1 at $1.99, get $1.99 in ECB (limit 2).

Sample deal for THIS week (ending Saturday, June 14):

Transaction #1:
Buy $20 worth of GM products. The cereals and bars are on sale for 3/$10.00 (reg. $3.99 at my store). I will be buying the following:
2 boxes of Nature Valley Granola Bars
2 Boxes of Honey Nut Cereal
2 Boxes Fiber One Cereal
Total before coupons: $20.00
Use the following coupons: 2 – $1/1 cheerios, 2-$0.65, 2 – $1/1 Fiber One
Cost after coupons $14.70 plus tax. You will earn $10.00 ECB

Transaction #2:
Buy 1 Oral B Cross Action Manual Toothbrushes (2 pack)
Buy 1 Listerine for Kids Mouthwash
Buy 2 Hershey’s Candy Bars (on sale for 2 for $1.00)
Total before ECB and coupons: $11.48
Use 1, $1.00 of Listerine coupon, Use $10.00 ECB
Cost after coupons and ECB: $$0.48 plus tax AND you earned $10.48 in ECB

Transaction #3:
Repeat Transaction #2, except add another Hershey candy bar (on sale for $0.50).
Your total before coupons will be $11.98
Use another Listerine coupon, use your $10.48 in ECB
Cost after coupons and ECB: $0.50 plus tax, and you earn another $10.48 in ECB

Transaction #4:
Buy 2 CVS Bandaids
Cost before coupons and ECB: $3.98
Use your $3.49 ECB from the Listerine
Cost after ECB: $0.49 plus tax, and you earn $3.98 in ECB

With 4 transactions, using coupons and rolling your ECBs here the breakdown of what you will spend and save.

SPENT: $16.17 plus tax
SAVED: $34.21
EARNED: $10.97 in ECB to roll into a deal for next week!

It might seem like a lot to spend up front because you have no ECB to apply towards the initial purchase. However, by holding your ECB and using them wisely, you can really start to save!

Saving money Works For Me…hope it does for you too!

Super Savings June 7, 2008

As I have said before here and here, we live as frugal as possible. After all, frugal sounds so much better than cheap! I used to think that pinching pennies meant that you didn’t get the ‘good things’. I was wrong. Crystal normally does a thing on Saturdays called Super Savings Saturday. I have not participated yet. Even though I get good deals and save a good amount of money in the process, I never mange to get a picture of it all before I put it away. I went to CVS this week and saved a little more than $141.00. When my mom tells my dad she saved money, his first questions is how did she have to spend to save that much! I spent a little over $11.00!

Did you see that? I spent a little over $11.00 total! It took three transactions, rolling over ECBs and using coupons. I was so excited to tell Heath! The best part? We needed the items pictured. Well, all except the glucose monitor. The monitor was on sale fro $30.00 this week and I had a coupon to save $30.00 off 1, so it was free. I plan to donate it to an elderly lady we know. I think the best part about saving is having the ability to still give to others. Some months it feels hard to simply feed 3 growing boys, a hubby and myself and I wonder if pinching pennies is even worth it. This month, it sure was! Now, if I had only taken the picture of my Publix trip…where I spent around $24.00 and saved $28.00!

WFMW – Saving on Gifts May 21, 2008

I shop all year long, really. I love it. Part of the reason I love it is I love to go on a hunt for a good deal. Every Sunday I am looking over all the ads from the paper, pairing them with coupons and making a list. But it does not stop there. I am always on the lookout for a ‘perfect’ gift for someone. As soon as Christmas is finished, I am shopping for Christmas the following year. We budget $25 a month for all our Christmas gifts. For those of you who don’t want to add it up, it is a total of $300 a year. This includes not just gifts for our extended family but for the boys too. Add into that the amount of gift wrap and $300 seems to disappear quickly. However, by budgeting that amount every month, if I see something in June on clearance that would be perfect for someone, I pick it up then. Shopping a little at a time affords us the opportunity to give better gifts than if we didn’t start shopping until December. In order not to lose the gifts I purchase, I keep them all together in a chest in our room. Last year I added up my savings from all the gifts we purchased to see what we were saving show my husband what a good shopper I was and we had saved close to $250! Shopping a little at a time, budgeting all year long and looking for deals really works for me!

Frugal Friday – saving money January 11, 2008

Crystal over at Biblical Womanhood hosts Frugal Fridays. This is my first time to try it but I intrigued at how she saves money. This week’s topic is how to save $100…painlessly! I have had to think about this one but here is what I have come up with:

1. We choose to only have the Sunday paper delivered. We get calls all the time with ‘special offers’ for the rest of the week. Honestly, it is just too much wasted paper in our house.

2. We have basic telephone service. By basic I mean no long distance, no call waiting or caller id. We have cell phones and if someone needs us they can always call that if our phone is busy. Our cell phones also have long distance so we just them for long distance calls.

3. We price shop. We compare prices all the time…because prices are changing. We know if it is cheaper to buy bulk or to by with coupons.

4. Copying Crystal, my husband takes his lunch to work almost every day. I also send lunch to school with the boys.

5. We plan our shopping trips. By this I don’t just mean a list, even though we do that. We live in the middle of two towns, each with it’s own set of store. If we are going one way, we make sure to go to all the store needed while we are on that side of town. Sometimes, I give me husband a list to go to a store on his way home from work. This saves on gas and time.

How do you save money? Check out Crystal’s post for more ideas!

Saturday Savings October 20, 2007

Anyone that knows me well, knows we live on a budget. When we first were married it was out of necessity. Now it is just the way our house runs. We try to save as much as possible and live off of only what we need. By doing that, I am ALWAYS on the hunt for good bargains. I am trying something new this week. I am going to show you one of the bargains from my week. I am not sure how often I will do this, as taking a picture of the items with children running around doesn’t always work! For more great bargains, head over to Money Saving Mom!

And would you believe I did not pay a thing for any of this? I had to refill my prescription this week. I normally do this at Target but Kmart had a coupon in their ad that you would get a free $10.00 gift card with a new prescription. I decided to make that $10 go as far as I could. Here is the breakdown.

Sunsilk Shampoo (plus free trial of conditioner and 24/7 creme): $2.99 – $2 coupon = $.99

Sunsilk 24/7 Creme (plus free trial of shampoo and conditioner):$2.99 – $2 coupon = $.99

Reese’s Cups: Sale for $1.88 each (reg. $2.69 each) = $3.76 – $1/2 coupon = $2.76

Popcorn: Sale for $1.25 each (reg. $2.19 each) = $2.50 – $0.60 coupon and $0.40 coupon = $1.50

Occasion Cards: $0.99 each = $3.96 – $1/2, $1/2, $1/1 = $0.96

Total before coupons and sales = $14.68 plus tax

Total after sales and coupons = $7.20 plus tax

I saved over 50% with the sales and coupons but since I had that free $10 gift card I did not pay more than I would have paid to have the prescription…and I still have a little left on my card for another trip!

Helping me to stay Frugal September 23, 2007

To those who personally know me, it comes as no shock that my husband is much more frugal than I am. You see, Heath is very wise. He takes time to think about what it would like to purchase. He has never been and I am confident he will never be a spur of the moment kind of shopper. We have been married almost 7 years now and there are days when I still find it difficult o be frugal. However, there is nothing that makes my day more than to call my husband and tell him I just saved over 50% off our grocery bill!

Mommy Zabs is hosting a writing project about three things that make you a better….you fill in the blank. I thought long and hard about that blank. I would try to fill it in but that blank was….well, blank. I realize I am a mom, wife, friend and believer but I was trying to think outside that box a little. Then it hit me, I am also frugal. I have had the opportunity on several occasions to help some of my girlfriends out with a little financial advice. Which to this day makes me laugh. I mean come on! If you knew me before Heath you would never have asked for my advice. I couldn’t save a penny!

However, there are a few things that help me (and my hubby) to be frugal. The first would have to be an envelope system. We really like the one from Dave Ramsey but you could even use plain envelopes. You basically fund your envelope with money for the month for things like groceries, gifts, clothes, etc. When the money is gone you can’t buy any more. It was quite intimidating at first but now we have the hang of

We also do not have credit cards of any kind. I know that might seem strange to some of you but we don’t ever need them. We have debit cards for emergencies but we fund out envelopes with cash needed. We even put away money for our cars. When things like new tags or oil changes come up we already have money set aside. And since we are always putting money aside for our cars and not always needing tags and such, we have a little surplus available for things like new fuel pumps and brake pads!

Finally, and probably the most important thing we have is accountability. It is a little scary I must admit since I like to spend more than save. But Heath is great and saving and keeping things on track in our house. We work together on our budgets. We trust each other with certain things. I handle the grocery money and clothing money because I am most likely to buy those things. He trusts me on that. I trust him on putting aside tax and insurance money.

You see, I may not be the most frugal person. I am sure I give in to lots of whims. But at the end of the day (or sometimes the end of the month) it is my envelope system, not having credit cards and accountability with Heath that help me be more frugal.